simon_doctor | (no subject)

They're on the tollway, speeding toward the port.

"Any last stops?"

"Nothing I can think of."

He watches the city roll by outside the car windows, a hundred subtle shades of glass and steel.

"You don't ever think about coming back?" Curiously.

He feels vaguely that he ought to be surprised by the question, but it's almost as though he'd expected it.

"Sometimes," he admits. "Someday."

"When you're too old to really enjoy it," he says, mostly cheerfully.

"I don't know if that's even possible." Lightly, as he brushes the window with the tips of his fingers.

Jordie snorts. "You were too old to enjoy it when we were in undergrad. That's why I dragged you out to do things against your will."

"Which I greatly appreciated. Even when I complained."

Beat.

"Though maybe not while I was complaining."

"You only appreciated it in hindsight," he says serenely.

"Would it have been as much fun for you if I hadn't complained, though?"

Jordie merges them onto the spur lane out to the port. "Hell yes. I did enough defense of my half-cocked ideas in class."

"But you didn't win in class as often as you did persuading me to do something insane."

Dry: "Thanks for rubbing it in."

"Considering how often you did win in class, I'd say that speaks more highly of your persuasiveness than otherwise."

Beat.

"What was that one time, with the art festival --"

"Oh, you mean the time I broke a date and used that to convince you of my seriousness?"

"That was the one." He's grinning. "It worked, too. Once I realized you meant it."

He reaches down with one hand and picks up the bottle of water in the cupholder, twisting off the top with three fingers still in the yoke. "We rescheduled. I forget the excuse I gave her."

"Mission of mercy to save a friend's sanity?" he offers.

"Tam, when your reputation with the ladies is founded on tall, dark, and only interested in one thing, is that really the best excuse to give?"

"You don't think it would have made you seem interestingly compassionate?"

Beat.

"There's a reason I was never any good at this."

Prompt: "Because you overthink it."

"Was that it? I always thought I got into more trouble when I tried not thinking about it."

Jordie's shaking his head. "No, look -- you can be a jerk. Everybody can be a jerk. When you apologize, though, especially with someone you don't know well, you get so ritualized about it that it's either coming across as wholly insincere or the bad kind of precious, neither of which is all that attractive. And the reason you get ritualized is becaue you overthink it. Whether you realize it or not. Because manners like that are just a way to overthink things."

Simon turns to look at him, with the tiny unconscious frown that means he's examining what he's just heard.

"You may have something there," he says finally.

His eyes are on the lane in front of him. "Long years of observation, Tam. You're rutting right I do."